Question

how you will solve these 4 problems in the Human Resources department.

1)A heavy administrative focus, as opposed to a strategic focus;

2) understaffing issues within the HR department itself;

3) disconnection from the company as a whole; and

4) having a strictly administrative reputation within the district.

Answer 1

1) A heavy administrative focus, as opposed to a strategic focus;

The human resources play a vital role in any organization. In today’s competitive administrative HR roles are being swapped for the strategic HR roles in the companies. The traditional administrative roles take time and resources, but the strategic roles also take up the garb of administrative HR when the department and executives struggle with the technology supporting talent management and to develop and assess talent within and outside the company.

The HR should focus on what managers need. HR should keep the human element while taking into account any problem. The HR should not find data, but start conversation with their people and managers to understand what is it that management wants. The team’s performance, productivity and other problems should be discussed with the managers. This needs careful listening as the problem might not have any HR articulation from the manager’s side. HR should also gauge the state of business in the company. After listening to the problems, the HR should not only get the data and figures for the processes, they should connect this data with the company’s data and also discuss the data and figures with the state of business and people’s data. Once organizational performance is discussed, HR can shift focus on what kind of talent is required, what kind of talent will be helpful in taking the company forward, what kind of talent development can help in sales productivity, training of new as well as existing staff on new technologies etc. The data collected by the HR should be used as the catalyst of change within the company rather than using these figures as canned reports.

2) Understaffing issues within the HR department itself;

To combat the problem of understaffing within the HR

1.         HR should prioritize and organize the workload – They should examine the assignments they have and prioritize their activities and organize them as high, medium and low and then start working on them.

2.         Team Players required – The HR team should have good team players and be willing to take on extra load of work once their own work finishes. They should help other team members.

3.         Recruit additional talent – If possible, HR team should look for additional talent which can help them with the overload of their work or they can ask the people from other departments to work part-time to shoulder the extra burden

4.         Effective communication – The HR leader should take it on them to communicate the plan to fight the shortage of staff effectively which will help the staff to survive and also work effectively. The team along with the leader should support each other and also help in getting the work done

5.         Maintain positive attitude – In a challenging situation like this, the entire team should maintain a positive attitude. The attitude should always be a can-do attitude. This will help the team to survive and thrive in any environment. This will also help in boosting the morale of the entire team.

3) Disconnection from the company as a whole

To solve this problem HR should

1.         Communicate - One of the best ways to connect with the company is communicating effectively. Any non-communication between management, workers and HR creates disconnect and therefore distances everyone from each. The HR should genuinely communicate with all the departments and people including management to connect with the company.

2.         Responsibility – Once disconnect from the company occurs, it results in the people stopping themselves from taking up any other responsibilities. People establish their own work and responsibilities and no interest in taking organizational responsibility.

3.         Engagement – HR department should encourage engagement at all levels in an organization. When there is disconnect from the company, people suffer from the disassociation, people choose “sides” and start thinking about their own rather than the organization and company. The engagement will help in employees and the departments getting connected with each other and also recognizing and understanding organizational goals.

4) Having a strictly administrative reputation within the district

To break the image of the strictly administrative image, the Hr should endeavour to bring in technology in managing various HR activities and also engage with the humans. They should communicate and engage with all levels of the employees and also understand what does business requires from them at a particular stage. HR should also help in identifying the strategic partnerships that they can develop with the managers, processes and business groups to get more and more inputs for their strategic planning and performance. HR should also partner with the business managers to understand the productivity, performance and management issues being faced by them and by the organization as a whole and how can these strategic issues can be sorted out to get the best for the process and the organization as a whole.